God punishes Eli’s sons and the rest of Israel by letting the Philistines win an important battle against them. After the first defeat, the ark of the covenant is brought out, but God isn’t with Israel so Eli’s two sons are killed and the ark taken by the Philistines. When Eli heard about this, he fell over and died too. Samuel had gained quite a reputation by now though as someone with a direct line to God, so he was in a prime position to move in politically.
Meanwhile, the Philistines were jazzed about having captured the God of the Israelites and took the ark to live with a giant statue of their god, Dagon. When they came back the next morning, the statue of Dagon was on its belly on the ground in front of the ark of the covenant. This happened a couple more times, along with some nasty curses and stuff. Everyone started getting bad tumors.
They moved the ark to another city, but then that city started having problems too. Finally they decided that the ark was more trouble than it was worth and they needed to give it back.
Once the ark was back in Israel’s hands, Samuel got everyone to worship the Lord properly again without trying to mix in a bunch of foreign gods and idols, and then organized an army to meet the Philistines, who had still been steadily soaking up more and more of Israel’s land.
When Samuel prayed for God to help them in the battle, there was so much thunder and noise that the Philistines were routed before the battle even started. Samuel’s army just waded through and killed them all.
After such a high-profile victory, of course Samuel was the people’s choice for a leader. For years he did laps around Israel mediating and teaching. They wanted him to give them a king too, but he balked at that. God was supposed to be the king, that was what was to set them apart from other people, what made them set apart for God. The Israelites specifically wanted a king to make them more like the other nations around them though, and finally Samuel gave into their demands for a king.
God told him first to explain to the people that a king would roll in and take all their best stuff for himself and his court and require taxes and tribute and service and all this material stuff on top of what was to be set aside for God. Samuel di his best to convince them that they didn’t want a king, but the people had made up their big, loud, communal mind and they would not be swayed.
Samuel told God about their demands for a king and He said to give them one.
I have a friend who’s an anarchist as well as a Christian. Well, he might not identify himself as an anarchist, but he’s sympathetic to their cause. I don’t agree with him all the time in his interpretations of scripture, but I feel like the last couple books have really promoted an anarchistic political system. Obviously there are clans and priests and all these official sounding social artifacts, but in practice, the way things work is that a need arises and then God drops in a judge with the skills needed to resolve the situation. If there’s a battle that needs to be fought, God calls up a good general and tells him to build an army. If there’s a whole bunch of Philistines that are going to need to be put in their place, God releases a super-human psychopath to terrorize them. If there had been some great need to build a relationship with the Latin tribes in Italy, God would have called a judge who was really into the shipping industry or something.
Now contrast that system with America today. If there’s a battle to be fought, we have a standing military already prepared to keep us safe. If there’s a famine or a natural disaster, we have federal programs already set up to deal with them, the national guard, FEMA, and so on. This reminds me of another facet of the arguments made in Steven Levitt’s Ishmael which I mentioned several times back in Genesis. Levitt opines through the titular character that it’s ridiculous to insist upon such a high degree of personal control over the world as we exercise in our culture.
On a personal level, Jesus talked about how we shouldn’t spend all of our energy worrying about where our clothes or shelter or even our next meal are going to come from because those things are under God’s control. When we spend all our energy trying to bring them under our own control, it’s disrespectful and only serves to show our own ignorance, but I’m getting ahead of myself now.
I’m interested to see how this king thing works out.
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